A Man with Four Names
A Man with Four Names
Four-part drama recounting the life of an 19th century African slave abducted and sold into slavery, and his lifelong struggle for freedom and justice.
Part 1: Moth
Ruthless slave-traders raid Ansa’s village in West Africa, abducting him and his brother, Kuroko, and selling them on to British slavers. Parted from Kuroko, Ansa has to endure the notorious Atlantic crossing, surviving brutal treatment, lethal sickness and a slave mutiny before his arrival in the Caribbean.
Part 2: Benjamin Hawk
Ansa is bought as a house-slave Jamaican plantation owner Henry Wickham and his new wife, Sarah, and renamed Benjamin Hawk. He forms an awkward friendship with Wickham’s son, Peter.
Later, Ansa develops a tentative relationship with Sarah’s maid, Kobia. But following Wickham’s rape of Kobia, Ansa, full of rage and frustration, escapes. However, he is captured, flogged and made to work as a field slave. He is reprieved from this arduous and dangerous labour when Peter requests that Ansa accompanies him to fight in the revolutionary war raging in North America. They take part in the British defence of Savannah, but Peter is killed. Hoping to win his freedom by fighting for the British, Ansa makes his way to the loyalist enclave of New York.
Part 3: Augustus Brown
The story of Ansa’s life continues, following his escape from patriot forces in New York and his attempts to settle with fellow ex-slave, Olivia, in Nova Scotia. Although now free, Ansa still has to fight injustice and prejudice, and joins a new venture, enduring a hazardous Atlantic voyage, to resettle in Sierra Leone.
Part 4: Ansa
The concluding part of Ansa’s life-story, detailing his battle for survival and justice in Sierra Leone, with his defence of an escaped slave leading to his arrest and deportation to England, where, having escaped prosecution, he starts a new life taking part in the abolitionist cause to end slavery.
Full treatment available upon request
Screenplay for Part 1 available upon request.
